Britain’s
construction bosses and their suppliers are the target of a new programme that
will bring their businesses up to speed on applying digital technology, so
improving productivity and profitability.
The new CITB-funded
scheme, ‘Giving leaders the skills to drive digital transformation’, aims to
train up to 2,000 construction industry leaders – at least half of them from
SMEs - from across England, Scotland and Wales in bringing the latest
technology to the sector.
Six projects will
train construction leaders in the skills needed to embed digital practices
throughout their businesses, by creating internal digital champions and
engaging supply chains.
The training will
encourage firms to develop diagnostic tools to identify and assess their
existing digital skills. The courses will offer teaching materials, modules and
mentoring schemes.
The six project
leads are: the National Federation of Builders, Willmott Dixon, Setting Out For
Construction, Supply Chain School, Leeds Beckett University and the
Gloucestershire Construction Training Group.
Over the next three
years the Supply Chain School – together with the Tideway alliance and its main
contractors, Costain and Skanska – will harness the lessons learnt from
London’s £3.8bn super sewer to upskill leaders and managers. The outcome will
be their ability to develop a digital approach to their activities. Half will
be SMEs from across the infrastructure sector.
Jeremy Galpin,
Digital Champion and Legacy Lead for Tideway East, said: “The Downloading of a
Digital Mindset programme is an exciting opportunity for us to drive increasing
digital maturity across the
project as well as
share our learning, learn from others and deliver a digital legacy for the
industry.”
Willmott Dixon will
be using blockchain in its project with a decentralised database called
distributed ledger technology (DLT). This results in cost savings by cutting
fraud and error.
Gloucestershire
Training Group will help SME leaders identify digital solutions to reduce waste
and improve efficiency.
Digital technologies
can help save time and improve productivity by enabling onsite employees to go
digital, saving hundreds of hours in manual data entry with documents such as
timesheets, expenses claims and work records.
Marcus Bennett, CITB
Future Skills and Innovation Lead, said: “CITB is supporting the construction
industry in understanding the potential savings and productivity benefits of
digitalisation, as well as embedding digital practice across businesses, especially
for smaller firms. Margins are strained and wage costs going up, so it’s vital
to make use of technologies that relieve these pressures.
“The CITB research
report, ‘Unlocking
construction’s digital future: A skills plan for Industry’, has found that
technology-specific skills aren’t the problem – the broader skills and
competencies at various levels need to be addressed.”
Other research
(External link - Opens in a new tab or window) consistently shows that
leadership buy-in is essential to ensure that construction shares in the
transformative productivity benefits of digital technologies, adopted by other
industries years ago.
